STORY

ENGINEER TO BESPOKE RING MAKER - Est. 2015

My name is Joseph Jàuregui, founder and creator for The Wooden Circle Co, based in Sydney’s inner west and specialising in non-traditional handcrafted rings. I graduated with a Bachelor of Mechatronic Engineering at UTS, and began my career in the engineering world. Whilst working as an engineer, I longed to put my passion of making things and working with my hands to good use, but didn’t quite know how, until I stumbled across the skill of bentwood ring making. It was the perfect side project, and I enjoyed learning this new craft. Little did I know at that stage that my hobby would soon replace my 9 to 5 career.

In August 2015, whilst still working full-time, I opened a Etsy shop with about 10 different types of bentwood rings. As with all new business ventures, it was slow going at the start. In our first month, I sold a grand total of 2 rings! Not one to quit easily, I persevered and as the months went by I worked hard to increase our brand awareness and expand our range by introducing other materials such as gold, silver, tantalum and many more. As time passed, the popularity of our rings grew. Before I knew it there weren’t enough hours in the day to craft all the ring orders we were receiving. I made the hard decision to leave my secure engineering job in July 2016 to venture into the world of small business, and focus on The Wooden Circle Co full time. Looking back, it was one of the best decisions of my life.

Now at almost 4 years on, we have grown a lot since our humble beginnings. To date, we have sold rings to 28 countries spread across 6 continents and currently have over 175 different types of rings that we handcraft. We are constantly gathering inspiration from the world around us for new designs and ideas, recently introducing cuffs to our store. We currently work from our home studio using traditional jewellery making techniques to craft our pieces. The methods we use allow us to create custom pieces that feature both individuality and personality.

Each piece is mindfully crafted, for our wooden rings, we only use FSC certified local and exotic wood. None of our wooden pieces are exactly the same, this is the result of hand-crafting each piece. We bend simple 'wooden circles' into beautiful bespoke pieces of jewellery for you to enjoy. We also craft rings from other precious and semi-precious metals, currently working with over 15 different materials.

We’re excited and optimistic for the future, and look forward to crafting bespoke jewellery for many years to come.